


Coming Up for Air

by MarisaKateBella



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Basically this is fluff, Family, Family Fluff, M/M, One Big Happy Family, Papa!Daryl, Season/Series 05, also told in a weird tense, as slow burn as you can get with 1k, inspired by the season 5 premiere, kind of slow burn, so don't judge me please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 09:14:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2462810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarisaKateBella/pseuds/MarisaKateBella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, like, think about this: Rick is going to be so protective of Judith when she gets older; she's so precious to him. The last link, besides his wedding ring he can never seem to remove for very long, to Lori. She's been taken from him, and he will never experience that pain again. </p><p>"That night when Judith is in bed, Rick and Daryl stand in their doorway, as they've done practically every night since they’d come to Alexandria, the safe haven that is still too good to be true. Daryl is framed by the gas porch light shining behind his head like the warm rays of the sunshine in the darkness. Before he can stop himself Rick is leaning forwards, crowding Daryl against the doorjamb, pressing their bodies together; toe to chest."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Up for Air

**Author's Note:**

> Just a drabble that started out as me having Rick/his family/Daryl feels from the Season 5 premiere.

When Judith is seven years old it's hard for Rick to let Maggie and Glenn take her for even one night. " _You're looking so tired Rick, let us take her. We're just across the street, it's alright. You **deserve** it!" _Rick almost has a heart attack when Judith is thirteen, and turns up missing one morning with blood in the bed, and Daryl has to inform him Michonne took her off to have "the talk". " _Rick, no girl wants to have that conversation with her old man!"_  At eighteen Judith wants to go to the cafeteria with the cute boy down the street. " _D_ _addy, everyone else gets to go on dates! I'm eighteen. I'm older than half the kids here. I'm an adult and I'm goin' on this date, dammit_!" And Rick is so shocked he has nothing to say as she storms past him out the door.

But at six Daryl takes her hunting for the first time.  _"Rick, she's gotta learn_." He had reasoned.  _"Be safe._ " Is all Rick had replied and Daryl blinks because...damn, he'd seen the way that Rick watched Judith's every move. How every time she'd gone from his sight Rick was a basket-case. Daryl brushes it off as a one time thing.

At eleven Daryl and Judith have a scheduled weekly hunting night. Daryl knocks on the door one day, at the usual time. " _Papa's here, I'm gonna go._ " Judith scrambles over her spindly child limbs towards the door, not quite realizing what she'd said. When asked about it later she had blushed and shrugged, looking down at her toes, curling them under her. " _I heard Daryl call Uncle Glenn it, it ain't a word I ever heard before. Pa-Daryl told me it was another way ta what you are, Daddy!_ " And that's how Rick had found out Glenn and Maggie were expecting, his laugh was wet and his blue eyes were sparkling with mirth as he looked at his innocent daughter. Rick had just nodded and hugged her closely, whispering into her strawberry blonde hair: " _you call him whatever you want to, sweetheart."_

At thirteen, Judith has a lot of questions. She's curious about EVERYTHING and Aunt Carol knows a lot she's found out, but about  _boring_ stuff like what a cellphone is or how electricity works. 

But Papa, he knows the important stuff, like how to skin an animal, and what kinda leaves you can wipe your ass with. He knows how to set traps and how to get blood out of clothes. Which unbeknownst to him, is probably the subconscious reason that, one morning, as he returns from a hunt, Daryl almost drops his precious crossbow when Judith comes running out to him. Her thinning preteen face scrunched up like she'd been about to cry as she launches into his arms. " _Papa! I woke up this morning with blood in my draw_ _s, I didn't do nothin' like cut myself or any of that._ " 

Daryl scooped her up, panicked, not caring that she had bled through her pants and he would have to wash his sleeve. Michonne was the first woman he'd come across and he had been glad it was her. She didn't have to ask questions; one look at Daryl's face and the distressed girl clinging to his jacket and she'd figured it out, taking the traumatized young woman with her into the woods, leaving her Papa, equally traumatized, staring after them.  

Almost as soon as she turns eighteen, Rick shows up at Daryl's house looking wrecked at eight o'clock in the evening and Daryl chuckles and let's him through, passing him a beer, which Rick cracks open, downs half, and then says " _Judith's got a boyfriend_." 

And through all this time Rick has come to see Daryl as Judith's father, her other parent, and he realizes there is no one else he would rather have to help him navigate this world. And as he sits on his back porch watching as Daryl shows their daughter how to use her very own pink, compound bow, it dawns on him that he has yet to acknowledge the feeling growing in his chest over the years; the warmth like the sun where his heart should be when Daryl turns to look at him with his playful, relaxed smirk.

And how  _stupid_ could he be to not realize it before?

That night when Judith is in bed, Rick and Daryl stand in the doorway to the front of Rick's house, as they’ve done practically every night since they’d come to Alexandria, the safe haven that is still too good to be true. Daryl is framed by the gas porch light shining behind his head like the warm rays of the sunshine in the darkness. Before he can stop himself Rick is leaning forwards, crowding Daryl against the doorjamb, pressing their bodies against one another; toe to chest. Daryl’s strong hands catch Rick’s biceps, but to his surprise, instead of being pushed away, Daryl yanks him closer and presses their lips together; to Rick it feels like he’d been drowning until this moment and didn’t even know it. He feels like he’s coming up for air.

Rick’s a mess the next morning over coffee, and Michonne laughs at him. _Laughs at him! The nerve of her._ And she reveals she’s known for years and he honestly couldn’t figure it out? It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. _Years, wasted Michonne! Wasted._

Michonne shrugs in that wise way that she does, smiling over her steaming cup. _I wouldn’t quite say that_.

Two years later, Daryl finally, officially, moves in, giving his little one room apartment across the small town to an elderly couple. That first night, they have a big dinner, with the whole family coming together. Even Carl has shown up, with the announcement that he and Sarah are expecting their first. Judith reports that she and Molly have settled in all right and the two best friends can’t be happier moving away from their overbearing fathers. Abraham, Molly’s overbearing father, hooks her into a noogie and clicks his tongue while Rick laughs and kisses the side of his daughter’s head. He looks at the twentyish people that crowd into their rickety home, not built to accommodate so many at the end of the world, and he thinks that this is the first time that he has felt as much like the father, sheriff, husband, and good man that he was since before all this had happened.

And when everyone has left and the house is quiet again, he falls asleep to the breathy snores coming from the man lying next to him, arm draped around his waist, who convinced him that living was about more than keeping yourself alive.

It is also about love, and hope, and family.


End file.
